Gumption, defined, is a lot of good things swished together that benefit you, like an order of mega nachos designed to help your life.

It is initiative and resourcefulness and courage and common sense and shrewdness. Probably some other stuff, too.

Gumption gets you out of bed and to work on time on rainy Monday mornings. Sometimes, it is the only thing that does.

Gumption makes you want to do a job right.

You might want to slack off. Gumption won’t let you.

Gumption makes you want to mow the lawn before it gets tall enough for your wife’s cat to get lost in it. The cat and your wife will notice and appreciate your gumption.

Gumption is what has kept you reading this column for this long.

Gumption is what enables you to take a bad situation and make the best of it. And life is full of bad situations.

Truth be told, some gumption and an entire box of Little Debbie Oatmeal Cream Pies will get you through just about anything life throws at you. (Good life advice: Hide some in your car for tough days.)

Gumption can be more than a quality. It is almost a spirit of being.

You may never have heard the word “gumption” in school, where the buzzwords are “achievement,” “gifted,” “talented,” “excep­tional,” and other formal words.

Nobody loves formal words more than those curriculum-writing, test-giving, high-powered educators, it seems.

But labels like “gifted” and “exceptional” won’t help you a whit on the morning after you graduate. They will be as useless as an empty box of Oatmeal Cream Pies.

So smart folks know “gumption” is more important than any of those.

It is one of the only labels that will matter. And it is one of the main qualities that will help you succeed.